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Saturday, October 13, 2012

In Simulacra and Simulation Jean Baudrillard gives two famous examples to the way simulation
destroys the real and the distinctions between reality and representation to
produce a hyperreality. For Baudrillard, Disneyland and Watergate are
sites of simulation that function in the same manner. Is it the difference they
establish (between reality and imagination in the case of Disneyland and truth
and lies or reality and ideology in the case of Watergate) which uncovers how
this difference collapses inwards to reappear as hyperreality.

Disneyland produces a
clear cut distinction between reality and imagination. Disneyland can be
thought of as a second order simulacra, one in which reality is somehow
reflected in its representation and the way American ideology is manifested
there can be studied. But this distinction between the real and imaginary in
Disneyland is nothing but a desperate attempt to hide the fact that there is no
difference. According to Baudrillard, all of America is Disneyland. Reality is
not distorted in some Marxian fashion (see The German Ideology), it is
the cultural code that pre-establishes life in America which is manifested in
Disneyland. Disneyland doesn’t let you be a child; it hides that fact that you
are a child.

According to Baudrillard
Watergate constitutes the same type of illusion which hides the workings of a
simulation. The scandal serves to reestablish order, and it is therefore not a
scandal but rather a cover-up for some other unspoken scandal. Watergate for
Baudrillard serves as the illusion that the unruly and blind force of capital
can be haltered. With all of economical reality hanging on the limb of
capital's recklessness, we use Wtergate to imagine that evil can be uncovered
and justice can be obtained, and thus we are blind to the true destructive
force of capital. Like Disneyland, a hyperreality creates the illusion of
distinction between right and wrong, truth and lies, and the illusion that
order can be restored.

In "Precession of Simulacra"
(in Simulacra and Simulation, 1981) Jean Baudrillard describes what he calls
"the third order of simulacra" in which simulation functions
through breaking down the difference between the world and representation in
order to produce a "hyperreality".

Baudrillard addresses two scientific advancements
that changed the way we see the world and allow for the production of hyperreality:
the discovery of the DNA and the invention of digital technology. DNA is a code
for life who determines who we are before we are allowed to do so. It is the
map that precedes the actual territory. Digital technology functions in the
same manner that codes reality and allows for its production.

The creation of the simulacra of
hyperreality is described by Baudrillard through three orders of simulacra manifested
in four types of images. In the first stage the image is "at one"
with the actual world and reflects a deep meaning. This is the basic form of
life which completely distinguishes the real from its representation and map
from territory. The following images correspond to the three orders of
simulacara as described by Baudrillard. The second image disguises a deep
meaning while damaging it. The third image describes by Baudrillard in the
process of creating simulacra or hyperreality is one which disguises the
absence of a deep meaning. The fourth and final image is one that lacks any
connection with reality, a "pure simulacra" and map which completely
replaces territory. For Baudrillard all types of images can coexist or be built
on top of each other, but the age of simulation makes it more and more
difficult to manifest images of the first and second order and we are left with
mostly hyperreality that has lost its connection the actual reality and that
can no longer signify anything but itself.

One of the central concepts on which
the ideas presented by Jean Baudrillard in "precession of simulacra"
(in Simulacra and Simulation, 1981) are built is that of simulation.
Baudrillard developed his notion of symbolic trade to account for the manners
in which we perceive and organize our world. Following Foucault, Baudrillard
sees the world as governed by impersonal power or a system which decades
control over knowledge of the world which is distributed across society.

Baudrillard identifies three orders of simulacra. The first order of simulacra is that which creates the real
as distinguished from representation – the map, the novel and the painting are
clearly an artificial representation of reality. Baudrillard ties this order of
simulacrum to the Renaissance in which the attempt to accurately represent
reality was the attempt to ratify its existence regardless of representation.
The second order of simulacra according to Baudrillard is that which blurs the
distinction between reality and representation. He ties this development to
industrialization and mechanical reproduction (following Walter Benjamin's
"Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction") which allows for
serial production of representations that eclipses the original. The original
loses its meaning in relation to its copies.

The third order of simulacra is at the
center of Baudrillard's "Precession of Simulacra". For Baudrillard the
real is always already constructed. This imagined real, which we falsely
believe to be actual reality, is what we lose when we move into the third order
of simulacra, that of simulation. Simulation is a real which is shielded
from the difference between reality and representation. This difference is
eroded in (post)modern times while simulation eradicates actual referents and
the real as separate from representation. The referent is then reproduced but
only this time "free" and independent of the sing, what Baudrillard
calls "hyperreality".

As long as we held the distinction
between the real and its representation it was possible to hold on to the
notion that the truth is in the world and not it the image. The real is
constructed through its opposition with representation. But simulation breaks
this distinction down and we can no longer claim that the truth is anywhere to
be found in some objective world.

One of the most challenging concepts
in Jean Baudrillard''s "Simulacra and Simulation" is that of
"the real". Intuitively we tend to distinguish what happens in the
real world from what is represented to us. We know (?) that what we see on
television isn't the real world but rather a representation of it. But
Baudrillard thinks differently. He uses the concept of "Simulation"
which he defines as the occurrence of something real which has no origin or
reality through the use of models: a hyperreality. A simulation is an event
which "stages" an actual event and recreates its conditions and even
experience. A simulation is like real life, only it's not.

Usually we think we can tell a
simulation from an actual occurrence, but Baudrillard's definition of the
concept argues the simulation is not something which follows the real, but
rather a "real" which does not stem from any other source or origin.
A simulation for Baudrillard is not something which disguises itself as the
real, but rather something which eliminates the actual "real", the
real which is distinguished from its representations.

When Baudrillard describes western
culture's move away from the real he argues that what we are losing is a
construction of the real. For Baudrillard, what we think is the real is always
in fact a simulacrum of the real.

To understand this assertion we have
to turn back to De Saussure's "The Nature of the
Linguistic Sign" in which he argues the lingual sign is made up
of an image or sound (signifier) and a meaning (signified). Saussure argues
that the lingual sign is arbitrary and that meaning is assigned by the function
and position the sign assumes within a system of structure. Baudrillars thinks
that the problem with this supposition is the idea the one sign is tradable
with the other, and that one sign can find its meaning through its relationship
with other signs. Like Barthes, (in Rhetoric of the Image as
well as Myth Today), the sign always
carries additional meaning, a connotation according to Barthes, which does not
make it entirely tradable with other signs. A sign, in other words, always
signifies an additional something else.

Baudrillard holds that at some point
in history, objects have become signs and sings have turned into objects. Social
trade ceased being one of objects and became one of signs and what they signify
(this is very similar to Guy Debord's thought in the Society of the Spectacle ).

This trade of signs means to
Baudrillard that the referent is slowly diminishing. We grow ever more detached from real objects
in our lives and our relations with them are now determined by their signs and
process of signification. The sign is therefore not arbitrary, as Saussure
would have it, but rather an historical construct. Likw Debord's description of
a shift from "having into being and then to merely appearing", Baudrillard
replaces actual trade with "symbolic trade" as the only contemporary
form of social reality.

The "real" of the sign or
representation is established when signs "freed themselves" from
social binds, an emancipation which occurred according to Baudrillard with the
collapse of feudal society and the rise of the bourgeoisie. Only then did signs
become arbitrary and a shift in their value began in the market of symbolic
trade. In today's consumer society signs are presented as if they were still
connected to the world, still having a referent, but this is only a pretended
connection achieved by the distinguishing the sign from the world. A product
signifies something added to my reality (success, comfort etc.). it does not
represent the object itself but only all those meaning assigned to its sign,
which are to have an effect in the real world. The real is constructed through
the sign and through representation. Reality, for Baudrillard, can thus no
longer function on the basis of its opposition to representation.

This is how Baudrillard describes the
real as simulacra. The real only pretends to be authentic, a stable and
objective originless reality, when in fact it is nothing but the product of
symbolic trade of signs in culture. For Baudrillard, there is no longer any
real difference between the real and the imagined, between the world and its
representation.

"...Thesimulacrumis never that which conceals the truth--it is the truth
which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true" (Baudrillard, "Simulacra and
Simulation")

The concept of Simulacra, or Simulacrum, was not invented
by Jean Baudrillard, and was a reappearing concept in French philosophical
thought like that of Deleuze, for example, before the publication of
Baudrillard's "Simulacra and Simulation" in 1981. In its lexical
ordering, simulacra is a material image which appears as something else without
having that something's features or essence. This is somewhat reminiscent of
Plato's objection to representations which come to replace the "real"
to which we lose access.

In "Simulacra and Simulation"
Baudrillard asks what happens in a world that is ultimately denied all access
to the real and in which only simulacra and simulation exists. For Baudrillard,
this is in fact the world in which we live. Simulations take over our relationship
with real life, creating a hyperreality which is a copy that has no original. This
hyperreality happens when the difference between reality and representation collapses
and we are no longer able to see an image as reflecting anything other than a
symbolic trade of signifiers in culture, not the real world.

In the chapter "Precession of Simulacra" Baudrillard describes three orders of simulacra. The first in
which reality is represented by the image (map represents territory). The second
order of simulacra is one in which the distinction between reality and
representation is blurred. The third order of simulacra is that of simulation which
replaces the relationship between reality and representation. Reality itself is
thus lost in favor of a hyperreality.

Baudrillard famously gives the
examples of Disneyland and Watergate to demonstrate the function of the third
order of simulacra and the production of a hyperreality that lets us believe
that we can tell reality from representation, the real from the imaginary and
the copy from its original.

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